“It wasn’t my call. I wouldn’t have done it that way.”
“No. You’d have just killed Mansell. Or had him killed.”
“If it was necessary. As a last resort.”
“You’re like a saint, in comparison. So, who made the call?”
Taylor didn’t answer.
“Don’t go shy on me now,” I said. “I’m in no mood to compromise.”
“OK,” he said, “but this is hard for me. Because the Tungsten you see today, it’s not the way I set it up. Things have changed.”
“In what way?”
“I have new partners, is the easiest way to say it.”
“Since when?”
“Three months ago.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know their real names. Iraqis.”
“You employ large men with automatic weapons. Why let anyone muscle in?”
“It’s not that simple. They found out what we were doing. We thought they’d try and shut us down. It’s happened a couple of times before. And you’re right. We’re well placed to deal with that. But these guys were different. They didn’t want us to stop shipping organs. They wanted us to ship more. And they were ready to help.”
“And you let them.”
Taylor shrugged.
“They’re well connected, locally. Tripled the supply of suitable donors. Even sent their own surgeons over here, to pick up the slack. We’re averaging one transplant per day, per clinic, since they came on board. Mainly kidneys. Some livers. Now we’re talking about diversifying. Into corneas, that sort of thing. All in all, it’s ninety percent good.”
“And the other ten?”
“Day to day isn’t an issue. It’s how they deal with problems that sucks. They overreact. Have different ideas about what you can and can’t do.”
“I know all about that. So who are they?”
“I told you. I don’t know their names.”
“Where can I find them? The bosses. Back in Iraq?”
“No. They’re here. They work out of the clinic on Sixty-sixth Street.”
“Hamad’s one of theirs?”
“Yes. Their fixer. He came over a month after they did. Most of the wild stuff is up to him.”
“And you stood back and let him get on with it.”
“What could I do? I’ve had my concerns from day one. But the other directors…”
“Head down, mouth shut, take the money.”
“Exactly. Why kill the golden goose? And be honest-would you have done it differently?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Pretty much all of it.”
TWENTY-NINE
We didn’t return to our barracks straight after the fire incident.
Instead, we were sent to an army base in Wiltshire for a hostage rescue exercise. None of us could see why. If anyone was being held captive in an embassy it wouldn’t be our job to get them out. Blowing holes in walls and smashing through windows isn’t up to us. But that kind of speculation is pointless. In the navy, you go where you’re told. And besides, it sounded fun.
The briefing for the first exercise was pretty basic. They told us eight terrorists were holding two hostages in an abandoned vicarage. As far as they knew, the terrorists were dispersed throughout the premises and the hostages were in a windowless room on the second floor. I was allocated to the first rescue team. There was me, another navy guy, and four special ops soldiers who weren’t too keen on working with us.
The navy guy and I created a diversion, pretending to attack through the basement. The soldiers went through four separate ground-floor windows, entering simultaneously and tearing through the building like wildfire. We came in after them and helped with the sweep. Between us we found the terrorists-only six, it turned out-and neutralized them easily enough with orange paintballs. The hostages were harder to track down. They’d been moved to a tiny cupboard in the attic. One was injured. She was barely conscious, and bleeding badly. Her companion was in a blind panic, convinced she was going to die. The soldiers slapped on a battlefield dressing and started to haul them out. Only by the time we reached the front door, all of us were covered in sweet-smelling red jelly. Because the hostages were already dead. The women were the seventh and eighth terrorists. And no one had found the remote detonator in the casualty’s shoe.
We didn’t have to take part in any more hostage exercises after that. In fact, there weren’t any. The whole thing had been staged. The soldiers had been in on it from the start. And the point wasn’t to teach us how to storm a building. It was to hammer home something entirely different. To take nothing and no one at face value.
Or, as I’ve found over the years, it’s usually the person you’re least expecting who causes the most trouble.
It was a ten-minute cab ride back to the FBI building so I made sure to use the time carefully. First I called for someone to come over and scoop up Taylor and his boys. Then I settled back to think. If I could make sure every angle was covered, there was a chance I could get Varley to sign me off the job after the 12:00 P.M. conference. That way I could take the rest of the afternoon for myself, have dinner with Tanya, and be back in London by suppertime tomorrow. Or suppertime the next day, if things went really well. Only I’d been as far as JFK already, yesterday morning. I didn’t want anyone pulling the rug out again today.
I was expecting some heavy flak after visiting Taylor on my own, and I could see I was right about Varley’s reaction before the meeting even started. He crashed through the boardroom doors, stomped over to his place, and sat there glowering at me until Tanya arrived. He let me talk first, but I guess that news of the arrests had reached him through the grapevine because he interrupted, sniped, and criticized at every turn as I brought the others up to date. Weston and Lavine weren’t much more constructive. But as the briefing wore on they began to see the possibilities. Bringing down organ smugglers is hard to beat for headline potential. Especially when the operation spans five cities. Coordinating something like that is a dream for career development. A task force would be needed. Leading roles would be up for grabs. Practical details started to dominate the discussion. And no actions were coming my way. There was no mention of James Mansell, so no need for a British presence in general. They had Taylor in custody, so no need for me in particular. Things were looking good.
Until I realized I was looking in the wrong direction. If anyone was going to trip me up, it wouldn’t be the FBI. It would be Tanya.
“I don’t agree,” she said, out of the blue. “What you’re proposing, it’ll take too long. It’s turning into a circus. We should hit the New York clinic now. This afternoon. There’s no time to delay.”
“We can’t do that,” Varley said. “We need confirmation that no other agencies are already into this. They could have people in there, undercover. Then we need surveillance. As of now, we have no idea what we’d be walking into. Or whether the big fish are even there. And we need foolproof cooperation from the other cities. It’s no good taking one crew down and letting four more walk away.”
“And something else,” Weston said. “The other end. Iraq. We need someone to sweep that mess up.”
“What a jurisdictional nightmare that’ll be,” Lavine said.
“I’m not a fool,” Tanya said. “I understand the big picture. But while you’re worrying about ‘what if this’ and ‘what if that’ the people we really want will be long gone. David proved that. Look how Taylor reacted.”
“We don’t know who’s involved,” Varley said. “We don’t know how many there are. We don’t have names or faces. And you’ve picked out targets?”
“Yes,” Tanya said. “The people who ordered the five murders. They’re the ones that count. Lives are worth more than money, however much we’re talking about.”
